Monday, December 8, 2008

Winston Churchill’s often misquoted as giving an entire speech where all he said was “never give up” three times, in fact he said the following and a little more: "Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” En Vogue and about a squillion others all know that it “‘aint over til the fat lady sings”! And even Rick Astley said he was “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down”… (yes, that was indeed a lame way to get an 80’s superstar into the blog!)

But you know what…with all of these stellar reference points, I’m still surprised at how much people do give up.

The PR firm who recent didn’t reply to my email asking them about their services (PS – anyone know a fabulous PR firm who do reply to emails? Let me know.

The real estate agent who told me that a property I had asked him to value was worth: “what it cost me, plus whatever profit I would be happy with”.

And my saddest quitter for the week showed themselves to me when I recently ran a contest to have a logo designed on www.99designs.com where we received over 180 entries. A few days into the contest I asked for a re-tweak on one of my favourite submissions. I didn’t hear anything back for a few days only to find out via a message later on that they’d “given up” when they’d seen the quality of the other entries. Funny thing – they were my favourite entry at the time they “gave up” and still ended up being my second favourite over all. If they’d not given up and been able to do the re-tweak, who knows what could have happened!

Now… I don’t believe you should never give up, have a read of Seth Godin’s book The Dip and you’ll see what I mean here… but in these cases please try:

1. Not to give up new business when it’s staring you right in the eye asking to deposit money into your account. 2. Not to give up when your “giving-up” reply will only serve to infuriate your client. 3. Not to give up when you’re just about to cross the finish line!

Today how bout we all let the only giving up you do be to “give it up” to someone in your life who rarely gives up!

I’ll start by giving it up to:

Lara Solomon, author of the hot on the shelves new business book Brand New Day who shares in diary format all the ups and downs of launching her Mocks business (think: Bridget Jones meets Richard Branson). Lara could have given up so many times, but she kept on plugging away and her story’s darn inspirational.

Rudy Ruettiger, whose story of never giving up on his dream to play football with Notre Dame was so inspirationally told in the 1993 movie Rudy.

Chistopher Reeve, the real superman to so many of us especially through his worth raising funds for spinal chord research in his last years with us.

Tim Ferriss, whose book – the Four Hour Work Week was turned down by 14 publishers (perhaps because the initial title was Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit!). Tim didn’t give up though and now his book has been translated into 31 langugages and was simultaneously the #1 book in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.